BIOLOGY, engineering, and the social sciences must work together, the author says, toward preventing passsenger-car accidents. He compares deaths and injuries from motor-vehicle accidents with the effects of mass disease-and calls the epidemiological approach used in disease study the most logical way of analyzing complex causes of accidents in terms of the interactions between the driver, the vehicle, and the environment of driving.
The author reports the many exhaustive studies of what makes an accident, then points out that efforts to improve driver, vehicle, or roads must always begin with human physical and mental characteristics and limitations firmly in mind.